Life as an expat.

I’ve been living in Madrid for a week now. Two months ago i was here on a holiday and got this feeling of moving the hell out of Finland. Ok, I didn’t actually want to leave Finlanf, but I wanted to go more than I wanted to stay.

In two weeks, I had a job, I gave my four week notice on my flat, quit my last job and started planning. Sold and gave away everything I had, and all I have left is a travel case full of clothes, a laptop, and my dog. And now i’m here and i’m still in misbelief.

My new job in e-Commerce is exciting at least, but I feel insecure about it all the time. I’m in a team of highly, highly experienced people and i’m still struggling in the most basic stuff in a Junior position. I work remotely, and this week I have barely talked to my colleagues. I haven’t had much work to do and doing nothing makes me feel super anxious, I fear that i’ll get fired during my trial period since I haven’t been that productive. Of course, it’s not my fault that currently they don’t have a lot of work for me. I’m trying to push away the stress my job is currently causing, but I can’t shake the thought of what if. I managed to put my whole life dependable on this new job in just a month, and being unemployed alone in Spain would be hell for me- I don’t even know the language. Still, the only thing I can do is to trust that everything works out and that my boss won’t judge me for not having enough work to do.

My lovely staffy girl T is snoring on my bed next to me. The studio flat I rented is very small, so I can just turn around from my working space and she’s in my arm’s reach waiting for scratches. I don’t think anyone understands how much that dog means to me. She’s everything for me, and I don’t judge if some people see that a little weird.

Only a year ago I got contacted by an old family friend. She sent me a picture of a scared, fat staffy girl laying on a hot pavement and said that she’s traveling from Spain to Finland to be adopted, but the family turned up to be suspicious and she needs a host family until she finds the perfect home. It’s kinda obvious that she turned out to be a classic case of a foster failure. Two weeks from when B contacted me, T arrived. The first few days she was so scared to the bone that she didn’t have the courage to even walk at my apartment- she crawled. Took me five days until I said to B that i’ll adopt her- it was T’s birthday and I promised her that I’ll never abandon her. Well, she doesn’t know that, but nowadays she trusts that i’m not leaving her if I walk through the door without her.I think we helped out each other in the best way possible. From the scared, fat crawling dog she grew to be an energetic, playful, kind and confident. She’s still shy, but she’s not scared anymore. And me, I had a history of a 10 year depression cycle, which just stopped after I got her. Just like that, I could feel that for the first time in my life I was balanced and happy. I even lost 20 pounds due to the increased exercise. Stopped drinking too much and started to feel confident and proud of myself.

Now it’s just the two of us in Madrid. The temperature is hell right now so we’re forced to stay mostly indoors near the air condition. I should be working at the moment, well, I would be working, but there’s nothing to do. It’s very frustrating having to ask people that hey, do you have anything, I mean anything I could help out with? Nothing makes me more frustrated than the feeling of being useless at the workplace.

In 2 months we take off again and we’ll move to Tenerife. I hope things at work get better by then, our office is located there and i’ll finally be able to meet my boss for the first time. I’m dying to meet actual people behind nicknames on Skype. Otherwise moving again so soon feels kind of a waste of time. At that point I’ve probably finally built a social network here and then I’ll be moving again, but I don’t want to complain. It’s a very lonely life moving from one place to another, but I know I won’t regret a thing.